Friday, October 09, 2009

Some News for Fri Oct 9, 2009

STARTERS

The last time the USA was in Honduras was late March of 2001. And while many things in American soccer have changed in just 8 years, others have stayed remarkably the same. The game that night was only shown in America via Pay Per View. (Sound familiar?) So, via the glory of Big Soccer, 8 of us lost souls met up in a basement in St Paul. None of us knew each other, but 1 person turned out to be none other than Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated (who wrote about that evening). For me the greatness of that night is today I am still in contact with all but 1 of those people, and 3 of them are regular travel partners of mine all around the world. In retrospect it was the best soccer night of my life. Let's hope that this weekends game on Closed Circuit from Honduras will create even more of those same type of great friendships!

TEAM USA

Damn I wish Clint Dempsey was healthy. I don't know what it is about that guy. My feelings for him are so love/hate its incredible. He can look miserable for 87 minutes and then pull something out of thin air like no one else. Pure ugly magic.

ESPN Soccernet also gives us an article by Dutchman Leander Schaerlaeckens, who says that what the USA really needs is Jermaine Jones, the Schalke midfielder with an American father who once played a couple of time for Germany and now wants to switch allegiances. I am baffled by this theory from Schaerlaeckens though. This article says Jones is a big answer for a hole on this team. How can you answer that without Jones ever even training with the team. Not to mention the fact that Jones has been out for over 6 months now with a badly broken leg that is requiring a 2nd surgery. And just last month Schaerlaeckens wrote an article saying American fans are too giddy about qualifying and thinking our team is a lot better than it is. What planet does he live on? Almost every USA fan I know has been fairly pissed off by our teams performances, not overjoyed. Where is he getting his info? And how can a journalist make these big proclamations on such a questionable player like Jones? What are the qualification of this guy doing the writing anyway? (Yes I know he used to write about the Dutch league for the Guardian.)

The business of running football all over the world has taken center stage in London this week at the Leaders In Football conference. Read all about it here.

ENDERS

Video of one of the worlds great dribblers doing his thing - John Farnworth. I am not the hugest fan of this stuff, but I know some of you love it, so here you go. Thanks to mpwasek for sending it our way.